I ran Hyde and Seek this last Friday at Kantcon. There were three players at the table and despite this being my first face to face Victorious game, everything went well.

We spent about an hour creating characters. My prior test run of the game on Google Hangouts paid off as I was much better prepared to facilitate character creation. The players were offered the pregens as well as the Hero Character 'classes' but all chose to create their own, although one did borrow some from the .

One modeled hers off of the Radiant archetype, however hers had a water elemental theme choosing a water force Blast, Ethereal (ability to turn into water), Force Shield (water) and Entrap within hardened water. She took on the name of Hazard.

Another took on the hunter role with lightning speed and elastic powers and carried around a buffalo gun.

The last was more of a street level rogue type who like to avoid combat with her Lightning Speed and Absorbtion, which channeled temporal damage into Dexterity.

At my recommendation, all had one to two ranks of Attribute.

I decided to have the first scene begin with a bit of roleplaying explaining the Heroes were having an afternoon social visit to discuss working together. As of course this was an afternoon tea, I served tea and cookies to the players using real (but child sized) tea cups and saucers.

We quickly jumped to the fire scene and the players had a lot of fun trying to save the various persons trapped in the burning building. They saved a woman with a baby jumping out a window by using Hazard's entrap ability to create an area of springy, shock absorbing water to jump on. The only difficulty was convincing the woman to jump.

the water elemental's The water elemental was at a definite advantage, encased within her force shield, protected from the smoke. She was disadvantaged as she had difficulty hearing the cries of people needing saving. The hunter ended up using his elastic skills to stretch from window to window, swinging around the building looking for people to save. He encountered the one fellow throwing personal items out the window, but decided the idiot was worth the trouble saving. He was neutral and when later discovered and saved an abandoned baby felt himself vindicated. The street rouge speedsters was having trouble getting the artist to leaving his one massive masterpiece. When the hunter and elemental finally converged and the hunter pointed his gun at the artist, the man decided it was indeed time to leave.

Given the limited time, I summarized the events and the nearby coroner's office and took them to the dock. They had a two-fold plan whereas the water elemental would gain access to the boat in stealth with her water form while the hunter and street speedster would go directly and try to storm their way aboard. They eventually discovered an unconscious Hyde being experimented on in the hold. In desperation the doctor awoke Hyde who promptly broke free and went on a rampage. It took quite a few rounds for the Heroes to subdue Hyde as all their attacks were physical based and Hyde had strong invulnerability to that kind of damage. Fortunately the hunter had his buffalo rifle and Hazard was able to push her water blast to R5 level a couple of times before she failed her saves and lost use of her powers due to fatigue. In a moment of inspiration, the water elemental turned her body to water and forced herself up into Hyde's nose and lungs trying to suffocate him. Finally, however, a shot from the hunter's buffalo rifle did the final HP of damage needed to fell the behemoth.

Observations from this and Hangout game:

- Unless you have a powerful rifle, firearm damage which cannot get an attribute damage bonus is at a disadvantage to melee/martial arts/blast which does get an attribute damage bonus. As such the mechanics sort of encourage smart players to choose Heroes that deal the damage from the latter types of attacks.

- A team of heroes would be wise to be able to do multiple types of damage. Hyde's invulnerability allowed him to shrug off most physical attacks unless they dealt a considerable amount of damage.

- Spending the time doing character creation was valuable in the convention game as it allowed the players to feel more connected with their characters and how to use their powers. One player observed how having a backstory for her character was more important in this game over others that she had played in.

- If you do character generation, a referee should expect to spend time with each player listening to their ideas and giving suggestions as to what powers and skills complement the Hero they have in mind. It took us just a bit over an hour to complete character creation with me splitting my time among the three players.

Humorous Anecdote

Over halfway through the game one of the players commented that another player's attribute could not be Prime because it was 16 and 16 was not a prime number. Up until that point she thought when I was asking if an attribute was Prime I was wanting to know if it was a prime number. We all got a good laugh out of that.

Dramaman, that was simply awesome! We're going to link this to the Victorious FB page...hopeing you don't mind?

Liz wanted me to ask you, how did you serve hot tea in a convention? She's wanted to do the tea and biscusts for a while now, but had to settle for just cookies at the last North TX RPG Con.

As for firearms, my personal house rule is that anyone shot with a firearm suffers either explosive damage (Gilded) or for grim chronicles its a CON save or die; regardless of your hit points. Lethal as hell, but then again firearms do that.

Heh, I couldn't solve the puzzle of how to serve hot tea either. You'd need to have an assistant brewing the tea somewhere else and then bringing it on a serving tray at a predetermined time... which would be really fun to arrange. No, I settled for some room temperature sweetened 'ice' tea that I picked up at the store on my way to the con.

Wow, those firearms house rules ARE lethal. I did think it kind of ridiculous that an encounter could continue very long after one or both opponents managed to actually put a bullet in the other. On the other hand, this IS a pulpy action game in which characters fly around and blast each other, so I was willing to suspend disbelief on that account.

It was a signup game and all the players had even pre-registered. Funny thing was that I was also running Tegel Manor which in year's past always maxed out or came close during pre-registration. This year nobody signed up for it, while Victorious was nearly full. So you beat out Tegel. Congrats!

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